The last English golfer to win the Open is in fine form. Not on the course, because that has become a bit of a slog these days, but he is swinging free and easy through his thoughts and memories and a few gripes.
He has a fair amount to share, from the wedge difficulties of Rory McIlroy to the attitude problems of Sergio Garcia, and in time will move on to the standing of a Tiger and the stench of a Great White. But first we go to bears.
‘Actual bears,’ says Sir Nick Faldo. ‘And rattlesnakes. It’s very snake-y. But I’ll tell you about the bears.’
He is sitting comfortably at the Belfry, a spot that calls back to when this knight was a king. Today, as a 65-year-old in semi-retirement, life is slower, less cluttered, and so his mind is on home, which for the past year has been a 125-acre farm in the wilds of Montana. That ranch is where we will find the bear.
‘I can’t tell you how much I love it there, so I’ll cut a long story short,’ says Faldo, but, then again, he was never much of a guy for cuts. ‘My wife, Lindsay, and I decided during Covid to just do it. We were about to start building in Florida, but it wasn’t enough for us. All you’ve got is turn left or right on the beach, it’s stinky hot, lots of traffic, not enough room for the dogs.
Sir Nick Faldo with wife Lindsay enjoying the good life on their new farm in Montana
‘The idea of a farm always appealed. When I decided to step back from TV last year, it just felt right — enjoy life, you know? We’d been going to Montana regularly because I designed a course there and the seed was in my head.
‘Anyway, I’m friends with Huey Lewis (the singer-songwriter) and one day I’m there and he asks if I want a game of golf with Kevin Costner, which is cool because I’ve been watching him in Yellowstone. We got there, had a look, and that was it. We sold up everything and went.
‘So here’s the thing about the bear. It’s funny, because it was the day before Lindsay’s birthday and I’d gone to buy her a nice wooden bear. I head off home so I can go fishing for a couple of hours and when I’m pulling in she is on the phone telling me not to get eaten by the bears.
‘I’m laughing, but then I see it. I’m on the other side of the fence and it’s a mama bear. You don’t mess with mama bears.’
Lindsay Faldo, who has come over to join us, is nodding. ‘We’re not top of the food chain there,’ she says. ‘I’d prefer to be nearer the top.’ Her husband resumes: ‘Then you have other neighbours — elk, wolves, coyotes. There are rattlesnakes in the canyons too and a friend of mine has a mountain lion near his place. Moose are what you have to watch out for.
‘So you have to look over your shoulder a bit, but it is just brilliant. You can see for 40 miles to the mountains on a good day and in that stretch you might have 5,000 people, compared to five million around London. I love it. But yes, it’s a different life to golf.’
With that, Faldo pauses for breath — he has been going for close to eight minutes on one answer. The short route was rarely his thing. Never that fussed with being part of a crowd, either.
The 65-year-old loves to fish, especially now he has given up his TV work in the States
One of British sport’s most reliable killers has an uneasy relationship with the idea of killing time. ‘It’s a bit unsettling to wake up and do nothing,’ he says. ‘That isn’t me, but I’m getting used to a slower pace.’
His departure from CBS last August, after 18 years as their lead analyst, was taken as a retirement, but he is still getting around. He is designing courses, popping up for occasional television gigs — he will be doing the Open next week for Sky — and for three decades has run the Faldo Series for aspiring golfers.
‘I’m not done yet,’ he says and it is certainly true that he still has his edge — the opinions that made him a compelling broadcaster have not drifted away in the American wilderness. With that, we go to his old sparring partner, Greg Norman.
They will forever be locked together in history, two titans of the 1980s and 1990s. Norman had 331 weeks as world No 1, Faldo 91. Faldo won six majors, Norman two. When Norman blew a six-shot lead at the 1996 Masters, it was Faldo who raced past him.
Their names are entwined and Faldo is taking in the madness of the past year, because we have been talking LIV and the messy landscape of mergers and reconciliations. All of which lead to the fire starter who might soon be blown up by his own dynamite.
No Englishman has won the Open since Faldo claimed his third Claret Jug at Muirfield in 1992
‘Greg hasn’t helped,’ Faldo says. ‘I think this would have been very different if he wasn’t there.
‘The fact that nobody wants to go to the table and talk to him hasn’t helped golf at all. In the pro world or the amateur world, nobody wants to have a meeting.
‘So that’s not good for the game. He’s really caused a lot of disruption. Whether he gets sideswiped now and they can all move forward, who knows?’
There is little sympathy, just as there is no affection for LIV, with the future of the breakaway tour a mystery after their Saudi paymasters joined with the US and European circuits.
‘If you still feel competitive, you wouldn’t go there,’ Faldo says. ‘I get why Lee (Westwood) and (Ian) Poulter are there because they think they can’t win. I’m guessing, but I don’t know how enjoyable it really is or whether the players are saying to their partners, “If I play for two years, I will make 10 times what I’m going to make on Tour”.
‘I’ve got no problems with them doing anything. They were being offered a boatload of money. I just don’t like the hype of how they think they’re changing the game. You go off and whack a ball around a field — what’s different? Taxis to the first tee? Team stuff?
‘Historic change? Well, no, because you haven’t got much coverage on TV, no atmosphere.’
Faldo doesn’t really do sugary coats. They aren’t his style. As a player, he operated with the aura of a man who saw great value in holing putts and none in the relationships between pros.
He was an insular, aloof, obsessive golfer, who was vastly respected among his peers but not much liked. Or to go by the words of Paul Azinger, Faldo’s opposite number as the 2008 US Ryder Cup captain, he could be ‘a prick’.
Those who know him well say he is far more of a sensitive soul than he would ever convey and yet he has spent so long projecting an indifference to what folk think.
On this day, he is more amiable and relaxed, like the warmer version we saw in the studio. He chats for almost an hour and likes to hold court.
He enjoys the mention that no Englishman has won the Open since he claimed his third Claret Jug at Muirfield in 1992 because ‘it keeps my name in the conversation’. This time round, at Hoylake, he fancies Tommy Fleetwood to make a run, but the inevitable fascination is in that enigma from across the Irish sea, Rory McIlroy.
The six-time major champion enjoys waxing lyrical to Mail Sport at the Belfry
It once seemed inevitable that McIlroy would pass Faldo’s European record of six majors, but nine years have passed since his fourth in 2014. Incidentally, McIlroy left Hoylake with the Claret Jug that summer.
‘I have a feeling he could have a great week,’ Faldo says. ‘He’d love to get to number five. The only bit which I see through my TV is his wedge play — he must be so demoralised some days.
‘He drives it better than anybody, probably in history. Then you hit a wedge to 50ft and might three putt. That is a killer to a pro.
‘You do that once a day it might wind you up, but he might do that twice. If he gets the bad shot to 20ft instead of 50, it makes a huge difference.
‘I always said my goal was to be really good from an eight iron and down. You don’t have to do much else if you can land it where you intend with your short irons. He is 34 — the next five years give him chances at 20 majors. I have a sneaky feeling he will get to five.’
Like many in the game, Faldo does wonder about the burden McIlroy incurred in his political contributions across a year of LIV chaos.
‘When you start talking about the same subject every day it drives you up the wall,’ Faldo says. ‘Sometimes you just want to go and concentrate on golf, do your own thing. For me, there was nothing better than having a bit of peace. I used to go down and chip a bag of balls and it would get to 5pm and no one would know you’re there. It is hard for these guys now to get away from the phones.’
Talk of different eras takes the conversation to the old question of who ranks where, or more simplified — Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods?
‘I’d go with Jack because of the 18 majors,’ says Faldo. ‘Tiger was incredible. When he won four in a row, wow. But the advantage Tiger has is we have seen every shot he has hit. There must be an awful lot of unbelievable shots Jack hit that didn’t make TV.
‘At 18 I’ll give Jack the edge. To be honest, he’s the man who inspired me to be a golfer.’
Faldo is shaking his head — his own game isn’t what he wants it to be. ‘I found a nice range with the mountains in the background and there’s only three of us out there most of the time,’ he says. ‘Some days the ball goes where I want but then I go on the course and I’m five over through seven. I’m a frustrated golfer in my 60s. I used to be good at this.’
It is perhaps through McIlroy’s struggles to cross the winning line in majors that modern fans can better appreciate the mountains climbed by Faldo way back when.
He doesn’t speak so much about regrets — at the Open he had 10 top-10 finishes, not counting his three wins. But if there is a frustration, then it concerns another event on the horizon, for we find ourselves in a Ryder Cup year.
Faldo played in 11 and is the second-highest point scorer in history. But 2008, his captaincy year, still seems to gnaw at him.
That trip to Valhalla was a bit of a disaster, not only for the 16.5-11.5 hammering but for the nature of the week. Poulter has detailed ‘plenty of things a lot of the players were unhappy with’, but criticism is a two-way street.
‘It’s a tough one because there’s no thanks when you lose,’ Faldo says. ‘You are out of the door on the Monday and there should be a debrief. But people take the attitude that you were useless because you lost.
‘I don’t have regrets. You can’t do anything as a captain when the guys go and play. My backbone was Padraig (Harrington), Westwood and Garcia and they didn’t perform that week. Padraig was knackered, Lee had blisters on his feet and Sergio couldn’t care less. So that was tough.’
Faldo does wonder about the burden Rory McIlroy incurred during a year of LIV chaos
It was a theme of the week that Faldo’s relationship with the Press was less than ideal — par for his career.
‘The roots started with my first couple of weeks on tour,’ he says. ‘What it felt to me was that’s what the media wanted, they wanted Faldo to lose. They wanted to give me a bashing. I’ll stop at that.’
And so he does. This year, when Europe face the US in Rome, he lists a core of Jon Rahm, McIlroy, Viktor Hovland, Matt Fitzpatrick, Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Justin Rose and Shane Lowry and is feeling bullish. The key will be in how Luke Donald fills the other four, but Faldo says: ‘I would stack those guys up against whatever America throw at them. No BS, I like that team. They need one rookie to have a hot week.’
It has been 46 years since Faldo was that rookie, going three points from three aged 20. Plenty has changed about him since then, but plenty has stayed the same.
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